Coyote Christmas

Contrary to the mournful western ballads, coyotes seldom howl; rather they emit variously pitched yaps and yips, so that a single coyote has the knack of sounding like several. They are especially vocal during bright moonlight nights, though sometimes we hear them in the late afternoon and early morning. Their shrill, excited clamor electrifyingly animates the desert, bringing indoors a sense of its tingling wildness. It is an eerie sound, which turns the night into a restless and precarious place and sharpens one’s feeling of safety behind closed doors. - Ann Woodin, Home Is the Desert

Back in January of 2015, almost five years ago, on our first night in a rented ghost town cabin in the high desert of southeast Arizona, we heard coyotes, and the sound, so like night sounds around our old northern Michigan farmhouse, made us feel right at home. There in the dark of a strange, new place, we smiled to hear coyotes. 

Much, much, much less welcome is the sound of one or more javelinas! Probably not really bent on mischief (as it certainly seems!), javelinas combine large size, very poor eyesight, and long tusks with terrifying voices, so when they come foraging in the middle of the night for whatever they can find — we have no garden for them, but once they managed to get into the shed where we keep our garbage, pushing open the metal doors we had unwisely (a mistake never repeated) left unlocked — the noise they make is blood-curdling. Give me coyotes any night! So far this winter, the season barely underway, we have had only a single javelina come calling, and it clattered and stumbled away in haste when met by the Artist’s yells to “Get out of here!”

Who, me? Not me?!

Last year we heard no coyotes and were uneasy. Had they moved away? Been killed? Ann Wooden wrote in 1964 that while the coyote was

… still considered a pest by the chicken farmer and the sheepman, … most ranchers are now beginning to realize that coyotes are beneficial, keeping the rabbit and rodent population under control, and the wiser of them encourage the coyote rather than shoot him. 

One of our neighbors speculates that coyotes become quieter when they realize that “singing isn't workin' for 'em.” We have always thought the chorus came after the kill, rather than before, but whatever the timing, our wild canine neighbors are back again in full voice this year, and we are happy to hear them. We hear them in the evening, in the night, before sunrise, and sometimes, less often, during daylight hours.

Cottontail rabbits no doubt have different feelings when coyotes sing, but even with all the coyote chorus performances, there still seem to be plenty of rabbits around. And now, on Christmas Day, after a rainy Christmas Eve day, the sun is back. Yesterday’s rain on the high desert was snow at higher elevations. Our mountain was snow-covered, though I have photographs only on my phone, as camera battery needed recharging.

Snow on the mountains…sunshine in the windows...birds at the feeder…rabbits in the yard…coyotes nearby. 

Merry Coyote Christmas!

Briefly Close Encounters

I'll ask you to picture most of today's post in your mind, as I have no decent photographs of my coyote encounters and went out walking without my camera on Sunday morning. 

Coyotes are common in our area, though they were less so in the past of living memory. Deer are more common, too, than they used to be. If it seems a paradox – wildlife increasing along with suburban-type spread – think of all the new lawns and gardens carved out of former forest as a never-empty buffet table spread for wild deer. Is it any wonder they approach the houses? And with the deer come their predators.

In general, of course, there is more wildlife around us than we ever see. Few people in Michigan have ever seen a vole, and yet it is the most common mammal (woodland and meadow) in the state. I have only seen two – and neither for more than half a minute, if that. Fuller and rounder in body than a field mouse, with a pudgy little face, the vole is as shy as a Borrower. Caught out in the open, seen, he is seized by panic and cannot disappear fast enough. Yet when we go walking in the country we are strolling over countless vole highways.

The presence of larger mammals such deer and coyotes, is more obvious. It’s a rare walk along a dirt road that fails to turn up deer tracks or coyote scat. Deep, sharply outlined hoofprints with sand and dust thrown up tell you that deer ran across the road very recently. How many were there? Were they being pursued, or did they scent your approach? That greyish coyote scat is old, not from this morning. Later in the summer fresh scat will usually contain (and it’s surprising when you see this for the first time) cherry pits, but fresh cherries are a long way off in mid-March. This is scanty scat. Was it a young coyote or only a very hungry one?

Along a line of giant old pines, trees collaborating with the wind off the lake to produce a symphony, nature’s power their theme, on the ground between the pines and first row of cherry trees lies half a deer leg. Bent delicately at what would be called the ankle if this were a human leg, the hoof is a healthy black, fur still intact, while above the joint the bone is almost completely exposed. Only a few shreds of red meat remain. And yet, though the remainder of the carcass is nowhere in sight, this tattered, bloody remnant manages to project the spirit of the living deer. Before death came life.

These are the signs. This is the drama of prey and predator, of nature red in tooth and claw but, for all that running and killing, animals only doing what they must to survive. Hatred has no part of this drama, which is not a question of war or demonization. And so, even a scene of carnage carries a sense of peace. Somewhere nearby are pups with warm, fat, full bellies, and soon there will be new fawns born.

At night the coyote chorus seems gathered beneath the bedroom window to serenade us. They sound closer than they are, but in the early morning, from an east-facing window, it is not uncommon to see a lone coyote making its way back through the orchard from the creek, returning to a den along the edge of the woods. A den, like tracks and scat, can be read as active or abandoned, according to the freshness around the opening, although giving any den a wide berth is never a mistake. One animal might have dug it last year and another taken it over for winter quarters.

Human beings rarely surprise wild animals attuned by necessity to everything going on around them, but once a coyote and I surprised each other. It was on an old cleared lane through the woods, a lane that descended into old woods from higher cleared ground, tilled fields, and my dog was still behind me, up on that open, higher ground. Since on our walks together she never allows herself to be left behind, I went alone down into the woods, confident that she would follow in her own good time. And there coming toward me in that wide, open, clear green swathe cut through the woods, expecting me as little as I had expected him, trotted a confident young coyote. We both stopped and faced each other silently, watchfully, unmoving, across the distance separating us. Then, as if by mutual consent, each of us turned back to go the way we had come.  Regaining the high ground, I went another way with my dog that day. Where the coyote went or what he did was his business.

I have seen other coyotes, and one other time the animal stared at me. It was on a hill just past our barn, in winter. Sarah was a puppy, new to our household, and for some reason I had taken her out on a leash that morning. She was fascinated by the coyote that looked through us with its blank, wild stare, standing its ground. I waved my arms and yelled at it to leave but had to take a few running steps to goad the animal into a gentle, reluctant, loping retreat, frequently interrupted by halts and backward glances.

Sarah was young then, and we had conversations with friends and veterinarians about dog vs. wild encounters. “Wild always wins” was the chilling verdict from one vet. Now, as then, I prefer the words of cowboy poet Max Black’s “Ode to a Border Collie,” which states that the border collie “makes coyotes tremble.” Sarah is a mix of border collie and Australian shepherd, and she’s grown into a big girl.

Not that I wish the coyotes bad luck with their hunting. I just don’t want them messin’ with us, and so far they have not. Peaceful coexistence is close enough.